Alive
by miaadventure
Summary: One year; two years; by the time three years roll around she still doesn't know if she's trusting her head or her heart. To her, they've become one, and now she has to figure out how to discern the two again.


**HI I'M ALIVE WHICH IS WHY I TITLED THIS STORY ALIVE KIND OF WHICH IS WHY I'M WRITING THIS STORY ALIVE SO HI ALIVE I'M DAD SORRY WHAT IS THAT OK HERE'S THE STORY BYE PLS READ THE AN AT THE END OF THIS**

 **Also warning you now, spoilers for GM Upstate. Read at your own risk.**

* * *

 _One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve._

She lifts herself out of the icy water, her hair sticking to her skin. The blonde takes a deep breath before repeating the same action of dipping her head underwater and holding herself there for twelve seconds until she lifted out to breathe again.

She didn't know why, she just did.

Correction: She does know why.

She needs a distraction.

..

" _Maya," he whispers so lowly to the point where she almost missed it. His lips are merely a few inches away from her shaking ones. Her cheeks are so hot where his palms caress her face and her skin is burning with a heightened awareness of the situation that, if it continued to escalate, would tear everything she knew and trusted in apart._

 _Maybe it was just the campfire beside the duo._

 _Or maybe not._

 _Maybe she really was in love with the cowboy, who rode a bull despite her opposition but did so without injury. He had proved her wrong, and at this point she was so thankful that closing the gap that now separated them seemed like the most logical and_ right _thing to do._

 _He breaks the intensity of eye contact when his gaze shifts to her lips, then to her hands resting at her sides, then to the ground as he pulled away._

 _She exhales, after holding her breath for what felt like an eternity._

" _Why did you do that?"_

 _Maya whispers it almost accusingly, but she was too full of guilt and remorse to be angry at him._

 _She could never be truly angry at him, though. (She doesn't know it yet, but she loves him too much for that to occur.)_

" _I don't know - I just wanted you to stop!"_

 _She thinks she knows why. She thinks that he wanted her to stop calling him nicknames. Her head says that he wants her to stop calling him names because he likes the naive brunette and wants everyone to know it. Her intuition says that he wants her to stop because he wants to hear her say_ it _without having to hide it in some metonym. Her intuition says that he wants her to stop because he wants to know that she's clear on her feelings for him and can say or express them without being cryptic._

 _Her heart wants to believe her intuition. But she thinks she needs to listen to her head. After all, that's what she's been doing for the past two years when it came to Lucas. Her head saw Riley, saw Lucas and then saw the perfection she thought only Cory and Topanga could have. Her head knew that history repeats itself._

 _But if he wanted to stop her for reasons her head gave, he wouldn't have almost kissed her. She knows that both in her heart and her head._

" _Please don't tell my sister," he says, breaking her train of thoughts._

" _You couldn't think of another way to stop me?" She asks, wanting answers._

" _Not at the time, no!"_

 _He looks embarrassed, guilty and frustrated. He apologizes for what he did, his voice lifting up slightly at the end, asking for forgiveness._

 _She accepts what her head believes. "You don't have to be sorry, Huckleberry."_

 _She can see him lose the tension in his figure. "Of course I like you."_

 _And with each of her words, he begins to relax even more. "You're a good guy."_

 _She doesn't look at him as she says, "If you had gotten hurt, I don't know what I would've done."_

..

She doesn't want to burn out. She wants to put out the fire lit fiercely inside her because she knows that if she falls too much for him, she'll end up hurting the person she loved with a fierceness that no one else could match. She values that relationship far more than the one she wants to have with him.

But isn't it OK for her to be selfish, just this once? Isn't it OK for her to want something for herself, just this once? Riley Matthews has a perfect life, and one guy can't bring all of crashing down, can he?

He makes both of them happy. And even if she really wanted him, the decision wasn't up to her or to Riley to make.

It was up to him, and try as she might, she would always second-guess her assumptions whenever trying to read him.

There was a lot riding on one person's shoulders.

..

" _You make a decision about us, Ranger Rick?" Her hand is twisted in his overworn blue sweatshirt, dried purple paint all over her face and hands as their eyes locked. He looks up at Farkle and Zay before looking back at her with a slightly smug smile. "I did."_

 _Her eyebrows are raised in faux surprise, nodding as she says, "Yeah?"_

 _But she pushes him away. "Well it doesn't matter."_

 _Farkle interjects, incredibly eager. "Well yeah it does!" Zay frowns, further supporting Farkle's statement. "Yeah, we've been waiting for, like, two years."_

 _They've all been waiting for two years._

" _No," Maya says, shaking her head at them before turning back towards Lucas. "It doesn't matter because you picked Riley."_

 _Riley doesn't notice Maya's demeanor fall in the slightest. Riley yelps and apologizes to Maya momentarily and only notices Lucas's confusion briefly before returning to her increased state of bliss and joy. "Because no matter who you picked, you picked Riley," Maya explains. She and Lucas don't break eye contact as she points behind her to the gleeful girl with her thumb. "You pick her, you get Riley; you pick me, you got Riley; 'cause that's who I've been lately."_

 _Lucas is still staring at her, and she refuses to believe the shimmer of hope inside of her that's thinking that his disappointment is because he was going to pick her. But he quickly composes himself and asks her, "What do you want to do?"_

 _She hesitates only briefly. "I need to decide whatever way I like you, not whatever way the little Mary Sunshine part of me skipping around in there likes you."_

 _She looks away, because if she had kept eye contact then what she said would be stronger than what her head wanted it to be. As for her heart…_

 _It would've had the intensity she was going for._

 _Riley breaks the tension. "OK, I don't skip-"_

" _You skip."_

" _It's the safest way to travel."_

 _But Riley digresses, as she sometimes does, and Maya can't shake his expression out of her mind._

..

 _One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve._

How does she like him?

She doesn't know yet. Or if she does, she's just been trusting her head too much that she's duped herself into thinking that heart and head are one and the same. She lost herself, and now that she's beginning to find herself again, she wants to make sure that she's trusting her heart when it comes to matters of the heart.

 _Matters of her heart._

 _Matters of the Hart._

 _Matters of the Hart's heart._

She laughs mentally at the overused pun.

 _Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty-four._

She rose out of the water, resting the back of her head against the wall.

 _I like him, I like him, I like him._

 _I don't like him, I don't like him, I don't like him._

 _I lo-_

She doesn't finish her thought, leaving the tub and toweling herself dry. If she had finished it - well, no, she could never finish it. It's a far too dangerous thought that (she thinks) could end her best friend and her.

Her head tells her she doesn't want anything to change.

..

 _She's standing in Topanga's, wiping away the few crumbs left on the tables. Lucas offers to give her a ride home, and she's nervous because after him and Riley had broken up yet again, she can tell he wants to talk to her._

" _You missed a spot." Maya can practically hear the smirk in his words._

" _Don't tell me how to do my job, Huckleberry." She says it with a bitterness both of them know she doesn't have._

 _He laughs, he_ actually _laughs, and she's not sure when the last time she heard him truly laugh was. When he stops, the conversation dies down and Lucas is reclined on one of the chairs while she's cleaning in comfortable silence._

" _I'm going to put this towel in the back, and then we can get going in your truck, Sundance." He laughs again, and tilts an invisible cowboy hat before standing up to wait by the door for her to finish. "Yes, ma'am."_

 _She rolls her eyes, but it's impossible for her to hide the beam stretching across her face._

 _When she comes back, he catches her off-guard._

" _Maya, why did you say I picked Riley?"_

 _She blinks and stops in her tracks. He's looking directly at her, but she can't see him mentally tracing the gentle curls of her messy hair or how he's studying the color of her eyes and noting how they perfectly match the cover of his favorite book._

" _I just… I just didn't want anything to change." She has to look away and directs her eyes to the floor. "You and Riley were the perfect couple when we started seventh grade, and I didn't want that to change because it would break her heart."_

 _It takes him a minute or two before he can reply, letting her words hang in the air._

 _Lucas sighs, and Maya's taken aback because she can tell that he wants control of the circumstances they've found themselves in for three years._

 _And she has to ask herself if he's finally making a decision, and making sure his decision is known._

" _Change is constant, Maya," he says, stepping closer to her._

" _I know, but-"_

" _You can't stop change." Another step._

" _I know, but-"_

" _Because change is inevitable." A third._

" _But-"_

 _A fourth step, and suddenly the space between them echoes the same distance that they were at in Texas, by the campfire. He doesn't need to say anything to cut her off, the tension between them is interruption enough._

 _History repeats itself. She knows that, she believes that, but it isn't until his hands lift to cup her cheeks, and she starts to burn again that she starts to really feel like it does. And she's scared, because this time she knows that he feels the fire in him too, and you can't mix fire with fire._

 _Lucas starts to whisper._

" _You know what else is inevitable?" He leans even closer._

" _Us."_

 _And they burst, exploding when he closes the gap. Her heart swells as her hands move to his chest and she can feel his heartbeat through his blue plaid shirt beating just as hard as hers is. She starts to believe that maybe she's not a fire._

 _That maybe she's a firework, waiting to explode at the right time._

 _Maybe Lucas wasn't the lighter, either. Maybe he was the fuse, and Riley was the fire that lit Lucas to light Maya._

 _Of course, it could have been different. If Maya were the bomb, then Lucas was the fuse and Riley was the light that set her off to explode in the midst of chaos and confusion and fear._

 _Her heart races even faster as their kiss deepens, and she thinks that if she's a firework then she has to be one of those fireworks that explode more than once. Her toes curl and she wraps her arms around his neck as his hands shift down her torso to hold her lightly at the waist._

 _But they have to breathe at some point, and when they pull apart all she wants is to feel that feeling again. She wants to explode again because now she's addicted to the rush and the heat and the fear comforted by his presence and what she swears feels like rebirth -_

..

 _Oh,_ she thinks, trying to understand the past.

 _I think I lo-_

No. She's not ready to say it.

 _How much longer will I have to wait?_

* * *

 **LOL THIS WAS SHORT, SORRY. It's a multi-chap, though, so don't worry. =)**

 **Hey! So I'm Mia, this is my first fanfic for GMW on FF. I'm on tumblr as mikitty167 and I wrote a few fanfics there. This story is marking my return to FF after a two year hiatus, and for more information, check out my bio!**

 **RFRF (Read, Follow, Review, Favorite)!**


End file.
